Why Was Media is Afraid of Dr. Gosnell?

There was an outcry against the media silence of perhaps one of the most horrific, under-reported story in modern times: Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his abortion clinic known as “The House of Horrors.”

The only national TV source was Fox News while the three major networks ignore it. After intense public pressure, CNN finally reported on it. A Twitter campaign and outcry against this media blackout, did open up a few windows to get the story out to the public, but for the most part, it was buried and ignored. My elderly father in Michigan who started a Saturday morning prayer group in front of an abortion clinic in Dearborn (which finally closed in March) is as prolife as one can be. He knew nothing of Gosnell. I sent an article out on email to my siblings across various states. They had not heard of it.

Most Catholic internet users were able to breakthrough the media blockade with Catholic sources, particularly LifeNews.com, which reported extensively on this historical trial. This lack of interest was more than odd given the typical formula for news reporting: If it bleeds, it leads. Curiosity mixed with revulsion draws audiences. The Gosnell story could barely be topped on the revulsion index: dead babies, victimized women, racism, horrifying visuals, and extreme governmental failures.

Pro-Choice From Afar

Only heartless people could look at that story and not cringe. Anyone with a heart would be repulsed. I believe that the liberal media has a heart and it is for that reason that they were afraid to report on Gosnell. This story would have broken their hearts and rattled their pro-choice leanings. They could not cover the Gosnell story without the truth of abortion rearing its ugly head. It is easier to be pro-choice from afar so they did not want to report on it.

The pro-choice media is like Adolf Eichmann (1906-1966). In The Banality of Evil–The Eichmanns Among Us, Dr. Marie Meaney recalled how the atrocities of the Holocaust were acceptable to people who were personally repulsed by killing.

She pointed out that Adolf Eichmann (1906-1966) never killed anyone by his own hand but was “a desk-murderer,” ordering the transportation of Jews to the gas chambers. “He simply executed orders, and since these orders were not something that gave him pleasure (he was not a psychopathic sadist), they had the trappings of duty,” Meaney wrote. When Eichmann witnessed the grisly murdering of people, it sickened him so he determined never to witness such a thing again. Likewise, the pro-choice media are afraid to report on Gosnell because the sickening truth of choice is dead babies. To report on this case is to look at dead babies and traumatized women.

If the media reported on the rules that Gosnell did not follow performing abortions, they would have to face what the killing would have looked like if he had followed the rules. To look upon the dead babies and baby parts photographed around his clinic, is to look upon the heart-breaking murders of innocent life.

To cover such a story means looking into the faces of the women who were unsure but pushed through, called names and scolded for being big babies and in some cases even physically forced. In the online documentary, http://3801lancaster.com, the harsh treatment and repulsive conditions women talk about are mere sidebars. Their deepest suffering is that their babies are dead.

The media takes pains to be non-racist but with the Gosnell story, they would have needed to report that Gosnell, a black man, played the race game, giving preferential treatments to whites because they were more likely to report him. The reporter might have realized that this inner city abortion clinic that aborted mostly black babies, is the face of abortion in this country. Black babies are as likely to be aborted as to be born. Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest abortion chain and almost 80 percent of them are in minority neighborhoods. Even though black women make up only 13 percent of our population, they account for over 35 percent of abortions.

If the media reports on the lack of government oversight, they’d have to recognize that every time legislation to regulate the abortion industry is proposed, the pro-choice lobby fights against it.

If they reported that some women were pushed into abortion by Gosnell, then they would have to recognize that whenever waiting periods for abortion are proposed, the media describes it as “restrictive.”

“One of the reasons that the mainstream media is not covering the Gosnell trial is simply this: America has gotten used to death, and in particular, the deaths of the unborn in abortion is simply not considered news no matter how horribly they die,” she stated.

According to her, “The law already says that we can kill the innocent–such killing is sanctioned,” she said. “All Gosnell did was take this sanction to its logical conclusion since there is no moral distinction between killing the unborn before they are born–and slaying them after they have emerged from the womb.”

Miller has seen the horrifying reality of abortion and the equal horrifying reality of a culture that turns away and does nothing to stop it. “Perhaps it’s not just Gosnell who should stand trial,” she stated, “but our whole national ethic that needs to be indicted for permitting such killing in the first place.”

Since Gosnell, there are more horrendous stories of abortionists killing living, breathing babies out of the womb and shocking conditions. Again, the national media seems not to be interested. But we must not stop telling the stories because if people are afraid of these stories because they have a heart that cannot face, it, then it means once they face it, they will have a change of heart.

About Author

Patti Maguire Armstrong and her husband have ten children. She is an award-winning author and was managing editor and co-author of Ascension Press’s Amazing Grace Series. Her newest books are: Big Hearted: Inspiring Stories from Everyday Families, a collection of stories to inspire family love, and Dear God, I Don't Get It and the sequel, Dear God, You Can't Be Serious, children's fiction that feeds the soul through a fun and exciting story.
Patti is a correspondent for the National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor & Dakota Catholic Action. She has appeared on EWTN 4 times and Fox and Friends as well as Catholic radio stations across the country.

2 Comments

Wow! Very well done Patti. Thanks for telling the story…may it inspire and encourage the rest of us to tell it too. Our disgust and frustration with the media’s response to this whole mess should propel us to do something…not just be disgusted and frustrated. May we ALL prayerfully consider our response and our action. Blessings on your day!